The present invention generally relates to a wrist exerciser for exercising muscles associated with palm and wrist of a person, and wrist and in particular to a wrist exerciser incorporating a message display for displaying messages to the user by means of xe2x80x9cvisual persistencyxe2x80x9d of human eyes.
A wrist exerciser is generally provided for exercising the muscles associated with the wrist and/or palm of a user which may be done for rehabilitation purposes. Examples of the wrist exerciser are shown in Taiwan Patent No. 135058 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,800,311. Both disclose a wrist exerciser to be held by a user""s palm and operated by the user""s wrist/palm muscles for exercising the wrist.
These conventional wrist exercisers are commonly regarded as an exercising device, rather than an entertaining device. Thus, generally speaking, they are not very appealing to general consumers. In addition, although some of the conventional wrist exercisers are provided with light and sound generating devices which cause light and sound during the operation of the exercisers, it may be further improved in enhancing visual versatility of attraction to general consumers.
It is thus desirable to provide a wrist exerciser having a more consumer appealing visual versatility.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a wrist exerciser having a message display for providing visual attraction to general consumers.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a wrist exerciser having a message display for showing messages and/or patterns.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a wrist exerciser having a message display comprising a number of particularly arranged light-emitting elements for displaying selected messages during the operation of the exerciser.
To achieve the above objects, in accordance with the present invention, there is provided a wrist exerciser comprising a spherical hollow casing having a top opening. A ring is received within the casing and substantially coincident with a great circle of the casing. A rotor is rotatably supported in the casing by being rotatably supported by the ring. The rotor has a circumferential groove defined in an outer surface thereof for receiving a rope wound around the rope. By manually pulling to unwind the rope through the top opening, the rotor is rotated in the casing. A number of light emitting diodes (LEDs) are arranged on the outer surface of the rotor in a predetermined fashion. A power supply device is mounted to the rotor and electrically connected to the LEDs via a microprocessor based control circuit for conducting on/off the LEDs in accordance with operation modes performed by the microprocessor. By making use of the persistency of human vision, a limited number of the LEDs may display complicated messages, including the rotational speed of the rotor.